Golfers Host Yale Spring Invitational

The Course at Yale. (photo by DSPics.com)

Apr 15, 2014

Last Tournament Before Ivy League Championship

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Returning home after two second-place finishes in a row, the Yale men's golf team will be hungry for victory when it hosts the Apr. 19 Yale Spring Invitational at the Yale Golf Course in New Haven, Conn.

The event will be played over 36 holes, with the field kicking off with an 8:30 a.m. shotgun start and playing continuously for two rounds. The tournament will bring together a 10-team field that includes Brown, Central Connecticut, Dartmouth, Fordham, Hartford, Harvard, Holy Cross, UMass-Lowell and Wagner.

"The team looks forward to having the chance to play on our home turf for our second to last event of the regular season," said head coach Colin Sheehan '97. "The forecast indicates the weather could be a challenge—a time-honored tradition at this event—but I know the players will relish the adverse conditions, whatever they may be."

At last year's iteration of the tournament, the Bulldogs finished in second place, nine strokes behind tournament champion Villanova, so this year they will be looking to build on that result.

Yale enters the tournament with a string of strong performances to its record: it has finished in no lower than third place in a northeast tournament in 2013-14. Last weekend, the Bulldogs finished in second place at the Princeton Invitational, which Harvard claimed by three strokes, and a week earlier Yale finished runner-up to No. 5 Georgia at the Met Intercollegiate.

The Elis will look to build on that momentum when they return to familiar territory this weekend. The Bulldogs will be paired with Harvard for both rounds of the Yale Spring Invitational and will look to get even with the Crimson after their victory at the Princeton Invitational.

Weather and course design will test golfers as they play through the Yale Golf Course, which was designed by champion golfer and co-founder of the USGA Charles Blair Macdonald. Recognized around the world as an exemplar of the early American golf course, the course has been voted the number one college golf course in America and was one of six courses selected to host regional playoffs for the 2015 NCAA Division I Men's Golf Championship.

Yale last won the Spring Invitational event in 2010, when the Bulldogs beat out Central Connecticut for the title.

This weekend will be the Elis' final opportunity to tune up before the Apr. 25-27 Ivy League Championship, held this year at the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J.